Stuff to read while you're eating your cereal. A blog on history, archaeology, science, technology, and whatever else I happen to be interested in. Be sure to follow me on Twitter! @ModernCerealBox

Innovation Review: The Foldscope

The flashy, expensive technology is often the most appealing, but it can be the cheapest and simplest innovations that mean the most to the world.

An inventor at Stanford has created the Foldscope, a cheap, collapsable microscope made largely out of paper. According to CNN, each microscope would cost less than a dollar to manufacture. Something this cheap, and more importantly this simple in design (making it easily undestood, usable, fixable and recreatable), could make it much easier for remote or impoverished communities to have access to scientific equipment that would normally be beyond their reach. The inventor, Manu Prakash, even hopes that this technology could make it easier for hospitals in poor countries to better diagnose diseases.